Design Workshop
Community Design Workshop Open House: Here is a presentation of the design suggestions developed by workshop participants. Please take the time to see the ideas area neighbors and other stakeholders came up with to plan for the new neighborhood. Here are the flyers (in English or Spanish) created by our engagement firm, The Pachner Company, who co-led this design workshop.

Design Workshop
An initial design workshop was held in August 2018 for the planned East Lafayette community of affordable workforce housing. Interested community members participated by sharing design ideas and preferences with other community stakeholders and the project team. Attendees made recommendations for the layout of the planned community, including housing types and locations, parks and trail amenities, and other infrastructure. Approximately 40 to 50 community members attended the open house. Participants learned about the project and shared their views on the opportunities and challenges presented by the site. The attendees then broke into nine small groups for an interactive land use exercise with a map of the site, building blocks, and construction paper to design the community.
After analyzing the community-designed plans, common themes emerged, including (but not limited to):
- providing a connection from Canterbury (by Peak to Peak) to 120th,
- providing a buffer along 120th and Emma,
- striving for lower intensity of uses along Emma St,
- prioritizing higher intensity of uses along the industrial edge, and
- encouraging multi-modal connections.
East Lafayette Advisory Committee
The first meeting of the ELAC was held on Aug. 15, 2018. At the second ELAC meeting (Sept. 17, 2018) members reviewed the outcomes from the Design Workshop Open House and provided additional feedback for consideration for the planning of the site. Most of the discussion was on the Design Workshop Open House planning outcomes that will guide the planning moving forward. The BCHA housing development team carefully reviewed the design suggestions from the Design Workshop Open House and ELAC members, and created three Draft site plans for community review. These plans reflected input received from neighbors and other area stakeholders combined with the mission of BCHA to increase the availability of affordable housing in our communities and the requirements of the intergovernmental agreement between BCHA and the City of
Lafayette.
The team presented draft site plans at the third ELAC meeting (Oct. 22, 2018) and also shared the draft site plans electronically with all ELAC members via email to allow one week to review the plans before the October ELAC meeting. At this meeting, the BCHA team also provided a presentation on the recent transportation/traffic study that was conducted near the planned housing site, and shared the latest information on transportation improvements planned for the area as well as other potential improvements that could result from the presence of the new neighborhood. Here is a PDF of the presentation that was given.
The fourth ELAC meeting (Dec. 10, 2018) included a re-cap of the recent “pre-application” meeting with City of Lafayette staff, a discussion around density, and a detailed look at the sketch plan process and timeline for the planned neighborhood of affordable workforce homes. Here is the presentation that was given, and here are the density comparables that were shared with the committee.
At the fifth ELAC meeting (Jan. 6, 2019), a proposed illustrative plan for the development was presented. The results and analysis of a traffic study of the area related to the proposal and its potential impacts were also shared. Here is the agenda for the meeting and the packet of materials that were reviewed and discussed by ELAC members.
Affordable Housing Development Fee
The City of Lafayette is supporting this planned affordable workforce housing. The fee, which went into effect in January 2016 and has been updated twice, now collects $1.00 per square foot on all new residential development to help fund permanently-affordable housing. In July 2019, this was updated to include a $1.00 per square foot affordable housing development fee on all new commercial development. Here is the ordinance describing this fee.